


Quid Sunt Plagae Istae

by Reynier



Category: Arthurian Literature - Fandom, Arthurian Mythology
Genre: Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Minor Character Death, POV Outsider, Post-Grail Quest, References to Eating Disorders (Minor), oh also pov outsider on lancelot/gawain i guess, okay this fic is literally just yvain and gawain being traumatized about the grail quest together, they are friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:02:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26069164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reynier/pseuds/Reynier
Summary: “Are you alright, Yvain?”Yvain glanced up. Lancelot was peering at him with a trace of concern in his dark eyes. “I’m fine,” he said. “Just-- well, I got bad news this morning. Miraudijs said my brother is dead.”Tilting his head, Lancelot gave a hum which was probably supposed to be sympathetic. “Yvain son of Uriens was a nice man. I liked him.” His eyes flicked across the table to Gawain and then back to Yvain. “Do you know who killed him?”
Relationships: Gawain & Yvain, Gawain/Lancelot du Lac (Arthurian)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 24





	Quid Sunt Plagae Istae

**Author's Note:**

  * For [secace](https://archiveofourown.org/users/secace/gifts).



> this is fanfic of lou's unpublished fanfic so have fun with that sdlfkjjdsflkdfslkj  
> oh also. title is from buxtehude's membra jesu nostri hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh it makes me cryyyyyyyy

“Someone killed my brother,” said Yvain, the week after Galahad’s death. Camelot’s errant birds had flocked back to court, and while some were still missing, the people he cared about had, for the most part, made it back safely. 

Gawain hummed under his breath, raising a sympathetic gaze from his plate of food. “The other Yvain?”

“Mhm.” He pushed at the vague lump of mixed grains on his plate. He hadn’t been eating well since returning from the Grail Quest, and knew it, but couldn’t find it in himself to force down the appropriate amount of food. “Miraudijs told me he stopped at the abbey where he had been buried. It was two years ago. I didn’t even know he’d died.”

“Lots of people died in the last three years,” mused Gawain, absentmindedly skewering a bite of pork. “I wonder if we’ll ever find out exactly how many. But--” He straightened, gave a short little sigh that indicated he was trying to look on the bright side-- “you’re alive, aren’t you? And I thank the stars for that.”

Around them, the murmur of the dining hall sounded dimmer than it used to, exhausted and depopulated. Yvain shrugged. “I suppose so. Glass half full, is that it?”

“Well,” said Gawain, “I’m a very positive person.” He gave one of his signature grins, confident and charming, but it didn’t look quite right. He seemed suddenly older, his eyes hollow and starkly outlined, and there was something cruel in the slant of his mouth. No one had won the Grail Quest. Then, without raising his eyes from his plate, Gawain said, “Oh, where do you think you’re going?”

Yvain blinked. “What? Nowhere.”

“He means me,” said Lancelot, just behind his shoulder. Yvain barely managed not to flinch. 

“You sit down and help me make Yvain eat his awful half-cooked barley.”

With a look of the same bemusement Yvain was feeling, Lancelot plunked himself down on the half-foot of open bench next to Gawain, who didn’t move over at all to accommodate him. “You should eat your barley,” he advised Yvain, a measure of quiet humour on his face. “Otherwise Gawain will embarrass us both. It’s best not to go there.”

“Oh, yes, we can’t embarrass Sir Lancelot,” muttered Gawain. He had finished his plate and was now casting his eyes about in case any more food had appeared. None had, but the goblet of wine Lancelot had brought with him seemed in imminent danger. “He’ll just embarrass himself further if we do.”

This was one of Yvain’s least favourite things about talking to his cousin and the people his cousin clearly considered his friends: the conversations behind conversations. He was not so insecure as to consider himself stupid. He knew very well he was more sensible than most, even if he was prone to bouts of extreme insensibility triggered by things like loss of wife, and it was not hard to tell that most things Gawain said meant at least one thing other than their apparent meaning. Generally Yvain was in on the joke, but as soon as Lancelot-- or, Heaven forfend, Guinevere-- appeared, the conversation was as good as lost to him. 

There had always been something in Lancelot and Gawain’s relationship that he did not understand. At the beginning the confusing thing had been why, exactly, Gawain had immediately latched onto the newest and most socially awkward arrival at court, even when Lancelot had quickly proved that no one else could be considered the court’s greatest fighter when he was around. Then the confusion had centered on why Lancelot seemed so entirely blasé to Gawain’s clear attempts at demarcating the two of them as friends, when anyone else at court would have fallen over themselves to get the same. Now, as the years had stretched on and frayed into discomfort, there was only a weary sort of confusion about why Sir Lancelot du Lac, who seemed to care for many people and like no one, so staunchly put up with the false laughter of a man who liked everyone and cared for very few. 

“Are you alright, Yvain?”

Yvain glanced up. Lancelot was peering at him with a trace of concern in his dark eyes. “I’m fine,” he said. “Just-- well, I got bad news this morning. Miraudijs said my brother is dead.”

Tilting his head, Lancelot gave a hum which was probably supposed to be sympathetic. “Yvain was a nice man. I liked him.” His eyes flicked across the table to Gawain and then back to Yvain. “Do you know who killed him?”

“No, and we’ll probably never find out,” said Gawain breezily, in a voice which indicated he was mildly dismayed about the other Yvain’s death but not enough to be interested in the topic of conversation for more than about two minutes. There was no point in getting irritated over his callousness. If Yvain couldn’t make Gawain care that he himself had killed people who didn’t deserve it, he was hardly going to be able to make him care that someone else had killed someone who mostly did. 

“Don’t be dismissive,” murmured Lancelot, “I’m sure you would be very upset if someone killed your brother. I’ve got to leave,” he added, with no change in tone. “Goodbye.” 

A lopsided grin on his face, Gawain threw a green bean at his retreating back. “Have a good chat with whatever his name is!”

Then they were alone again. Yvain felt distinctly uncomfortable, but that was nothing new. He didn’t understand Lancelot, and while he understood his cousin very well he most certainly did not understand their odd half-friendship. Maybe someday he would ask about it.

When he looked up Gawain was looking at him, his eyes sharp. “I think you need a drink,” he said. “Come on, I’ve got something in my rooms, I’m sure. Take one last bite of your barley and follow me.” Then, without waiting for the barley consumption to happen, he pushed himself up from the table and meandered away, leaving Yvain to hurriedly shove down a bite before scrambling in his wake. 

“I don’t want a drink,” he said, when they had emerged into the corridor. A blast of chill air confronted him. “Can we just-- it sounds stupid. Can we just talk? Like when we were children?”

Gawain didn’t say anything, but he shrugged and kept walking in the direction of his chambers, so presumably he assented. They hadn’t  _ talked _ in years. They had joked, and chatted, and spent time together in groups-- but not talked. As Gawain had drifted further and further into the exalted circles in which he roamed, he had never forgotten Yvain, but he had had less and less time for him. Yvain was a very busy man as well. They couldn’t be blamed, either of them. 

“My room is a bit of a mess.” Gawain had stopped in front of his door, a strangled look on his face. “Just-- don’t comment, alright?”

“Of course I won’t-- good God.” The door swung open, revealing Gawain’s ‘bit of a mess.’ Clothes were strewn across the floor, along with various items of weaponry, assorted household items, and several bottles of wine. Yvain bit his tongue and tried very hard not to say anything.

Stepping through the door, Gawain waved a vague hand. “I was just going to dart in and grab a bottle, but since you wanted to talk like old times, I may as well bare my soul. Sit down, I suppose. Floor is fine.”

“I’m--” Yvain perched on the corner of an armchair and decided to give up. “What happened?”

“It’s stupid,” said Gawain. He was standing in the center of his floor, rubbing his hands together and not making eye contact. It had been quite a while since Yvain had seen him this vulnerable. “It’s stupid and I wouldn’t have told you except you’re truly one of my closest friends and I can’t help but feel-- guilty, I suppose-- I don’t know. It’s stupid. And you wanted to talk and you’re right. I’m sorry your brother died, Yvain, I really am.” Now he looked up. His dark brown eyes were wide with miserable guilt and  _ exhaustion _ , and it made Yvain want to cry. 

But for once he could be the mature one, even if it was him who had just received bad news. The Grail Quest had been hard for everyone. “Thank you, Gawain.” Then, trying for humour but coming out slightly too morbid even to his own ears: “Hey, you didn’t kill him.”

Gawain let out a bark of laughter, ran a hand through his hair, and collapsed on the floor. “I did, though,” he said, very quietly. Then he paused, shook his head. “I called the Grail Quest, didn’t I?”

Yvain’s breath caught.  _ Oh,  _ he thought. It was true. And no wonder, in the end, that Gawain was dealing with the whole affair as though it were simply another half-dark joke on the part of the universe. Three years was time for a lot of people to die. Even if you were Gawain, that had to weigh on you. “I’m sorry,” he said simply. “I don’t know what to say, really, but I’m sorry.”

“Lancelot keeps trying to help me clean this whole mess up,” said Gawain, gesturing at the room at large. “Says it’s bad for me. But I don’t want the servants rummaging around in my stuff and for some reason-- I told you, it’s ridiculous-- I just can’t make myself do it. I know it needs to be done and I can’t do it. Cider?”

“No. Thank you.”

“Mulberry? Barleywine? Anything?”

“Really, no.”

“You’re probably right. Anyway, you wanted to talk. Here’s my talking. I wish-- God, I wish I had never said we should look for the Grail. It was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.”

Yvain hummed, didn’t deny this. “It’s over now, though. It’s over and we’ve all got to move on. I wasn’t good enough, you weren’t good enough, it doesn’t matter.”

“You think I care  _ I  _ couldn’t get the Grail?” Gawain leaned forward and peered at him. “Yvain, I never thought I would get it. I thought Lancelot would.” Then, before Yvain could say anything, he continued in a rush of words: “I thought Lancelot would get it but in the end it’s my fault he didn’t and it’s  _ my fault his sins are too great  _ and also God tried to burn him alive. God tried to burn him alive, Yvain! That should have been the end of it. Do you know how close I-- how Camelot-- do you know how close we came to losing him?”

This was a lot. It was a lot on many fronts, and mainly a lot on the incomprehensibility front. Shivering in the draft from the open window, Yvain tried to piece together the information he was being given. Gawain  _ never  _ talked like this. He never showed any kind of weakness that wasn’t carefully tailored to instead be some kind of a roundabout strength. And somehow Yvain felt that he was perhaps the only person in the world save Guinevere to whom Gawain would ever talk like this. “We lost a lot of people,” he said uncertainly, “why is it Lancelot you’re so worried about? He barely even likes you.”

Gawain stared at him. “Yvain,” he said, after a moment of blank-faced blinking, “I love him.”

“You-- what?” This was not the most elegant of response, especially paired with some frantic jaw movements reminiscent of a surprised fish, but the concept of Gawain so plainly stating he loved someone who was not under the dual umbrellas of Family and Guinevere was an eventuality that he had never thought he would encounter. “What? And he knows?”

“Yvain,” Gawain said again, and now his voice had darkened to its more usual mildly amused timbre, “you know the other meaning of the word  _ ami _ , yes? Come on, Yvain, I know we’re inconspicuous about it but you’re hardly blind.”

They sat in complete stillness for several seconds before Yvain put the pieces together and, in a comic exaggeration of surprise, clapped one hand over his mouth. “What? What?”

“Well done,” murmured Gawain, glancing away. His face was painted in an uncharacteristic blush. “Glad you got there eventually.”

Then Gawain’s previous confession reasserted itself with force in Yvain’s mind, and he waved a furious finger at him. “You’re not the reason he didn’t achieve the Grail, even so. Don’t say that. Don’t-- I mean, I never thought you would fall into that fallacy.”

“Because of the murder, is what I meant.”

“Oh.” It was unclear whether this was a more or less accurate evaluation of Lancelot’s failings before God. Yvain tried to find words that would reassure Gawain without also being highly insulting. “I mean… I hardly think it’s your fault Lancelot is-- that he’s--”

“A killer?” said Gawain wryly. 

“Mm.”

“I mean, good try, Yvain, but it very much is.”

“No, it really isn’t.”

“It really is, though.”

“Isn’t.”

“Is.”

“Shut up,” said Yvain, and threw the nearest object he could grab at him, which happened to be a shoe. They were both too tired to derail the conversation into a different, equally traumatic conversation, so there was no point in pressing the matter. And besides, the air already felt clearer. “He’s alive, though. That’s what matters. Even God couldn’t kill that man.”

“I suppose so. Well. I’m glad I dreadfully embarrassed myself in front of you, it’s been a delight as always. You’re welcome to continue lurking on my chair as I lie on the floor and, like a child, refuse to clean my room.”

The rickety open window and the piles of belongings stared at Yvain. He looked at his cousin, affecting a position of great repose with his eyes closed, surrounded by what seemed to be the former contents of a closet. He looked at the door. He sighed. “Come on, up you get. You’re helping me put everything away. I will wave things at you and you tell me where to put them. Understood?”

“Don’t you dare touch a thing,” said Gawain, without opening his eyes. “It’s my mess. You’re too good to get bogged down in my world.”

It was unclear whether he was talking about his room, his friendships, or his morals. But Yvain knew him well enough to see that pushing the matter would only be construed as insultingly patronizing. So he simply stood, shrugging, and made his way carefully to the door. “Thank you for talking,” he said. “You know I won’t tell anyone. Get your room clean. I love you.”

“Mm,” said Gawain. Then, as Yvain stepped out into the hallway, he spoke once more. “I really am sorry about your brother.”

Yvain gave a sad little smile. “Yeah,” he said, “so am I.”

**Author's Note:**

> stan yvain


End file.
